Despite most of the movies and shows I watched being on (too many) streaming services, it proved more difficult than I expected to get a “Wrapped” summary of what I watched on each of them this year. What follows is an incomplete list of what I most enjoyed watching in 2025.

Andor

I’ve written about Andor already this year, but it’s worth reiterating just how good this show was.  It's the best live-action Star Wars outside of the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.  It rivaled the best shows on TV this year for quality regardless of genre.  Trump’s second term made the show painfully-relevant to our present.

Adolescence

As a parent to twin 10-year-olds, the most terrifying 4 episodes of TV I watched all year when it comes to the impacts cyberbullying on children.  Even though it’s set in the U.K., the ways young people have their own language, the cluelessness of police to what’s happening under the surface, the parents of the young boy trying their best but still feeling overmatched—all of it felt uncomfortably universal.  It’s the only thing I watched this year that I recommended to another friend of mine with kids as a show worth watching.  Disappointed as I was that Andor didn’t bring home any major acting awards, Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper really did earn the Primetime Emmys they won with their heartbreaking portrayals of father and son.

Dope Thief

This show was very good, and very stressful, primarily because of Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura’s portrayls of Ray Driscoll and Manny Carvalho.  Small-time crooks get baited into a much bigger score than they can handle and so many things go tragically wrong.  Corrupt cops, cheating, betrayal, addiction, grief, a gunfight outside a hospital—this show packed a lot of story into just 8 episodes.

Down Cemetary Road

Based on Mick Herron’s very first novel, this show skipped over a bunch of others in my too-long queue of show to watch—and it was worth it.  Emma Thompson is great as a sleazy, sort of punk rock private investigator named Zoë Boehm.  Ruth Wilson (an actress I’ve enjoyed watching since she first appeared in Luther) is fun to watch as Sarah Tucker.  The show gives you a bit of the dysfunctional government agent bits we see in full flower in Slow Horses, but is primarily a mystery.  There are 3 more Zoë Boehm novels.  Perhaps Apple TV+ will put all the rest of them onscreen.

F1

One of just two movies this year I made a point of going to a theater to see, it delivered on the visuals and the sound that I expected from a movie about modern F1 racing, with the unexpected bonus of a 24 hours of Daytona preamble.  Really impressive that Brad Pitt and Damson Idris really were driving those cars in excess of 180mph on camera.  Not the best racing moving storywise (Rush was better), but a fun movie to watch.

Foundation

Season 3 of Foundation, while it has key differences from Asimov’s books in both characters and plots, is a show I really enjoyed.  Lots of great acting performances here, especially Laura Birn as Demerzel and Lee Pace as Brother Day.  I was blown away by the finale, and am very curious to see what Season 4 brings.

MobLand

A proper British gangster tale starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, & Helen Mirren.  Mirren’s depiction of Maeve Harrigan in particular is amazing in this—a much different character than her potrayal of Cara Dutton in 1923.  Playing opposite Brosnan as Conrad Harrigan, the dynamic she creates is adversarial.  I really hope this show gets another season.

The Pitt

Noah Wyle in a medical drama that wasn’t ER was one of the best things I watched this year.  Despite some of the legal drama regarding whether or not it was an ER sequel, this show was much better than any ER sequel could have been.  The entire season spanning a single shift, the flashbacks to COVID, the casting, the acting performances, setting it in Pittsburgh, the storylines (addiction, budget concerns, PTSD, burnout, etc)—every choice just worked.  Season 2 starts January 8 and I’m looking forward to it.

Severance

Despite an awfully long hiatus between the first season and the most recent one, 

Sinners

I made a point of seeing this movie in the theater on the biggest screen I could find because I watched Ryan Coogler geek out on film formats for about 11 minutes.  An excellent story about racism, blues music, and colorism (and vampires both metaphorical and real) in 1930s Mississippi.   The depiction of Delta Chinese people in this movie was spot-on, according to a documentary I’ve seen on Chinese folks in the Mississippi Delta.  The same is true of the Choctaw people who appear briefly in the film hunting the vampire Remmick.

Slow Horses

Espionage is probably my favorite genre outside of science fiction, and the latest season of Slow Horses was excellent.  This crew of mostly-failed MI-5 agents balances the serious and the funny very well.  Gary Oldman as the profane and broken-down Jackson Lamb is the polar opposite of the capable and competent George Smiley he depicts in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  I’ve read all of Mick Herron’s Slough House series except the latest—Clown Town—which released just this year.  I sincerly hope Apple TV+ decides to put the entire series onscreen because they’ve done a great job with the first five novels.

Task

From the same creator behind Mare of Easttown, this show is another crime story set in Pennsylvania with a similarly grim tone.  As in Dope Thief, some motorcycle gang members serve as key villians in this one too.  Mark Ruffalo was excellent in this as an FBI special agent who was formerly a Catholic priest.  It was very interesting to see Fabien Frankel and Thuso Mbedu in their roles here having and enjoyed their performances in House of the Dragon, The Underground Railroad, and The Woman King.

Tour de France: Unchained: Season 3

I haven’t been on a bike in years, or come anywhere near competing, but this documentary was compelling to watch.